Brain-Kink Sermon

Sometimes Norma will compose a veggie face from her garden. Here is today's:

It brightens up our sideboard on this disturbingly hot Sunday. My job is to compose the sermon. And I am working on it, though with indifferent success. Nothing I have said to myself today has left any profound feeling behind it. This, and the heat and one thing and another results in brain-kink. I am reminded of gardening.

When I gardened for a living, sometimes my friend Rogelio would drive round and help me with big projects. One day, he was climbing out of the truck and stepped on a flattened aluminum can. Flattened aluminum cans on pavement are different  from littered leaves and paper wrappers. They are deceptive. When stepped on, they will skitter energetically away, bearing any amount of weight --indeed, converting it into horizontal acceleration-- ignoring all protest and this is what happened to Rogelio.

To his credit --or double credit to a man half his age-- he kept upright. One foot remained on the speeding can while all other limbs fought centrifugal, centripetal, gravitational and universal forces, known and unknown, that rule our lives.When he found his way back from whatever unseen distant place he'd slid and managed to dismount at, poor Rogelio was holding his side.

He said,"Iiiieeee! MygoddamnBACK!"

For several weeks I heard this exclamation repeated whenever Rogelio moved wrong. It became a kind of mantra, to which I responded by suggesting we sit down together. He refused to take a break of any sort while I continued working, so I had no other option.

Then I forgot to bring beer. "Are we in trouble?" I asked.

As a gang-mower roared by, I heard,"Es fácil salir...rumble rumble... de algo que...rumble... no está en." I took this to mean one has no difficulty getting out of something one was never in, or something is easy with rumbles, or rumble rumble rumble --which I accepted as a personal axiom that always gives me brain-kink.

Iiiieeee! MygoddamnBRAIN!

Go in peace.